There remained the guide. What course would he adopt? Would he
not take part with the Indians? In default of his assistance, it
was necessary to be assured of his neutrality. Sir Francis
frankly put the question to him.

"Officer," replied the guide, "I am a Parsee, and this woman is a
Parsee. Command me as you will."

"Excellent!" said Mr. Fogg.

"However," resumed the guide, "it is certain, not only that we
shall risk our lives, but horrible tortures, if we are taken."

"I think so," said the guide. The worthy Indian then gave some
account of the victim, who, he said, was a celebrated beauty of
the Parsee race, and the daughter of a wealthy Bombay merchant.
She had received a thoroughly English education in that city,
and, from her manners and intelligence, would be thought an
European. Her name was Aouda. Left an orphan, she was married
against her will to the old rajah of Bundelcund; and, knowing the
fate that awaited her, she escaped, was retaken, and devoted by
the rajah's relatives, who had an interest in her death, to the
sacrifice from which it seemed she could not escape.

The Parsee's narrative only confirmed Mr. Fogg and his companions
in their generous design. It was decided that the guide should
direct the elephant towards the pagoda of Pillaji, which he
accordingly approached as quickly as possible. They halted, half
an hour afterwards, in a copse, some five hundred feet from the
pagoda, where they were well concealed. But they could hear the
groans and cries of the fakirs distinctly.

They then discussed the means of rescuing the victim. The guide
was familiar with the pagoda of Pillaji, in which, as he
declared, the young woman was imprisoned. Could they enter any of
its doors while the whole party of Indians was plunged in a
drunken sleep, or was it safer to attempt to make a hole in the
walls? This could only be determined at the moment and the place.
But it was certain that the abduction must be made that night,
and not when, at break of day, the victim was led to her funeral
pyre. Then no human intervention could save her.

As soon as night fell, about six o'clock, they decided to make a
reconnaissance around the pagoda. The cries of the fakirs were
just ceasing. The Indians were in the act of plunging themselves
into the drunkenness caused by liquid opiummingled with hemp, and
it might be possible to slip between them to the temple itself.

The Parsee, leading the others, noiselessly crept through the
wood, and in ten minutes they found themselves on the banks of a
small stream, whence, by the light of the rosin torches, they
perceived a pyre of wood, on the top of which lay the embalmed
body of the rajah, which was to be burned with his wife. The
pagoda, whose minarets loomed above the trees in the deepening
dusk, stood a hundred steps away.

"Come!" whispered the guide.

He slipped more cautiously than ever through the brush, followed
by his companions. The silence around was only broken by the low
murmuring of the wind among the branches.

Soon the Parsee stopped on the borders of the glade, which was
lit up by the torches. The ground was covered by groups of the
Indians, motionless in their drunken sleep. It seemed a
battlefield strewn with the dead. Men, women and children lay
together.

In the background, among the trees, the pagoda of Pillaji loomed
distinctly. Much to the guide's disappointment, the guards of the
rajah, lighted by torches, were watching at the doors and
marching to and fro with naked sabres. Probably the priests, too,
were watching within.

The Parsee, now convinced that it was impossible to force an
entrance to the temple, advanced no farther, but led his
companions back again. Phileas Fogg and Sir Francis Cromarty also
saw that nothing could be attempted in that direction. They
stopped, and engaged in a whispered colloquy.

"It is only eight now," said the brigadier, "and these guards may
also go to sleep."